First of all, let me say that I'm mildly surprised at the traffic pattern on the website today. It's not even 1:00 pm yet, and I've already had about 350 hits. That's not surprising, but what is interesting is that I've put up three different topics in the past 14 hours--
1) Pizza
2) Casino Freak
3) Gambling with Angy
--and the only one seeming to generate any interest whatsoever, as far as comments are concerned, is the couple of paragraphs about pizza. Clearly, my audience is far more interested in food than they are about life in Vegas.
Who knew?
Anyhow... For whatever reason, I was wide awake at 6:30 this morning, unable to sleep after just four hours or so in the sack. So I made a pot of coffee and spent a few hours websurfing and whatnot. Finally, around 9:30 or so, I decided to get up off my kiester and do something. Remember, both my bedroom and bathroom needed attention, plus the laundry monster is calling my name, too. So yeah, I did one load of laundry, wrote out a shopping list, burned a cd, took a shower, and headed out.
Last night, when I was coming home from Target, I saw that Trader Joe's over on Eastern that until then I had no idea was there, so that was to be my first stop this morning. The main objective in this particular hunting and gathering mission was to find pre-made pizza dough. Word around the campfire is that it was available at T.J.'s.
So I grabbed a basket and headed inside. I haven't shopped in a Trader Joe's since, oh, 1999 or so, back when times were good and money was plentiful. So it was almost like a new experience to be in there. First of all, I noticed that I was probably the only Republican in the joint, especially when it came to the employees. I also noticed a shift in the offerings they sold--it seems that they used to sell a lot of different brands of hard-to-find unique foods, and now all they have is Trader Joe's brand organic goods. And who knows how the quality stacks up versus the groceries I usually buy. So I was a little put off by that. However, you gotta give props to a store that dedicates a good 20% of it's floor space to wine and beer!
Anyhow, I wandered around that place for a good half hour looking for pizza dough, and thought I was gonna come up empty. Hell, they only have six aisles, how hard can it be? Well, I finally found it in the ready-made lunch and sandwich section next to the meat and seafood. It was well hidden, tucked away on the bottom shelf in a basket. But they had one-pound bags for 99-cents apiece, so I grabbed four of them. Once that task was accomplished, I felt like I was free to browse.
My next purchase was a big bottle of low-sodium soy sauce, just because I feel an Asian cooking binge coming on, and I had nothing to season my rice with. I've always thought regular soy sauce was way too salty, anyways, so I grabbed a bottle. I also spent about eight bucks on a big bottle of high-quality extra-virgin olive oil. Again, I had none, and will need it when pizza time rolls around. Lastly, I grabbed a bag of frozen chicken fried rice, taking the easy way out when it comes to accompanying my crab rangoon.
While I was browsing, they had their tasting station set up in back with fried calamari rings and four different dipping sauces. Once my shopping chores were done, I finally stopped to have a sample. The squid was ok, but it had cooled off. Instead of the regular cocktail sauce, I tried their featured sweet and sour.
Yuck.
Room temperature fish with sauce that belongs on poultry was not a good combination at all. Of course, after that, I had that nasty fish taste in my mouth, and didn't have any gum or mints on me. But it was time to go anyways. While I was waiting in the checkout line, I made an impulse buy. I justified it by saying that the fishy taste in my mouth was the reason, but basically, it just looked too damn good to pass up.
It was a bar of Ritter Sport Dark Chocolate with Whole Hazelnuts.
Oh. Hell. Yeah.
I couldn't resist it's siren song, and it found it's way into my cart. And as soon as I got back in my truck, it found it's way out of the bag and into my mouth. Now, I don't eat much candy anymore--hell, I haven't had anything that could even be considered candy since Mamasan's peanut butter balls at Christmas, but damn, this is good stuff! (I'm just now finishing off the last piece as I type this!) Oh, and it tastes way better than that calamari.
Once I got done at Trader Joe's, I headed back over to Smith's to get a few more items on my shopping list. I needed some half & half, but I also picked up all the ingredients to make beef enchiladas and Spanish rice, too, along with a pastry brush and a few things I'd forgotten on my Tuesday morning shopping trip.
After I got home, I was finished--I got all the groceries put away and I was just too tired to hang around in the kitchen cooking, so my culinary adventures will have to wait one more day. I was thinking of indulging in a little Grimaldi's for lunch (hey--it's been almost two weeks!), and I even called Lars Vargas to see if he wanted to join me. But he had to decline, as he's feeling under the weather this week and wouldn't enjoy it as much as he'd like. So we made plans to do it next week, instead.
Once I hung up the phone, I lost all motivation to cook or eat. I'm just too tired from the lack of sleep last night, and the ol' clock on the wall is telling me that I have only about four hours before I have to get ready for work. So, I'm taking the afternoon off from all further chores or cooking, and I'm going to try and get a nap in before I spend the entire night in the casino.
Peace out, y'all.
Mikey
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